Meta considered building Twitter competitor to take advantage of Elon Musk’s “crisis” at company. Report: “LET’S GIVE THEM BREADS AND BUTTER!”

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NYT reports that Meta brainstormed ways to make Twitter a competitor after Elon Musk took control of the platform.

According to a report by The New York Times, Meta wants to capitalise on Elon Musk’s chaotic Twitter takeover.

The Times reported that employees from Facebook and Instragram met virtually in November to brainstorm ideas for building an app text-based like Twitter.

One Meta employee said in a post that Twitter is in crisis and Meta needed its mojo back, according to The Times. “LET’S GO FOR THEIR BUTTER AND BREAD.”

The publication reported that the workers brainstormed about creating a text-focused app using Instagram’s technology. According to The Times, employees considered adding the text-based feature to Instagram’s existing platform like Instagram Reels or rolling it into Instagram Notes.

Instagram Notes, a new feature in the photo-sharing app Meta started testing this summer. It was then rolled out to a small group of users. This new feature allows users to send short, text-based messages to their “close friends” and followers.

The Times reported that Meta employees had come up with several names to be a possible competitor to Twitter, including Realtime and Real Reels.

Insider reached out to Meta for clarification, but they did not respond.

This isn’t the first time Mark Zuckerberg’s company tried to replicate another social media platform. After shutting down Lasso’s TikTok clone and testing it again, Instagram also took on TikTok with Instagram Reels. Zuckerberg has also discussed making Meta’s WhatsApp a WeChat competitor. In the past, Zuckerberg expressed an interest in Twitter. Zuckerberg tried to buy Twitter in 2008 for $500 million. The company declined the offer.

Meta isn’t the only company that wants to profit from the Twitter storm. Mastodon and Hive, smaller Twitter competitors, have also joined the fray. Tumblr, a microblogging site, took advantage of the opportunity to poke fun at Musk’s plans for his social media company.

There has been uncertainty about the future of Twitter since the billionaire took it private in October. Musk took control of Twitter within hours, and fired many of its executive staff, including Parag Agrawal, the CEO. Musk later fired about half the company’s employees and hundreds more left on their own after he asked workers to work an “extremely difficult” schedule. There were concerns that Twitter would suffer more outages after losing so many of its engineers at the time of the mass exodus.

Some celebrities quit the platform in the weeks that followed Musk’s acquisition. Advertisers also stopped advertising on the platform due to concerns about content moderation. Twitter would be in serious trouble if it didn’t have major advertisers. Ads accounted for 90% of Twitter’s revenue last year.

Musk has been trying to convince advertisers to come back to the site. Musk has repeatedly stated that the site’s users are at an all time high.

The billionaire stated last month that “the best people are staying”, so he is not worried.

You can read the entire story of The Times on its website.

Business Insider has the original article.
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By: gkay@insider.com (Grace Kay)
Title: Meta considered building a Twitter competitor to capitalize on Elon Musk’s ‘crisis’ at company, report says: ‘LET’S GO FOR THEIR BREAD AND BUTTER’
Sourced From: www.businessinsider.com/meta-considered-twitter-competitor-amid-elon-musk-crisis-report-2022-12
Published Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2022 16:29:24 +0000